Malf on 18/8/2016 at 09:37
Elite's already made me spend more money on hardware than any other game I can recall, and the last thing I need is a ~£700 VR bill, you vile temptresses >:E
Edit: Mind you, I can't help but think I get a lot of the VR experience with Track IR. Maybe not the sense of scale, but headtracking is definitely very immersive.
Thirith on 18/8/2016 at 09:39
You don't want to know how much money I've most likely spent on the various incarnations of Rock Band...
Thirith on 23/8/2016 at 07:20
Quick question to those who've played this for longer: what are your thoughts on the different available weapons? So far I've been a gimballed pulse laser guy all the way, but as I'm close to getting my first Cobra Mk III I'm thinking about changing it up. Any recommendations?
Malf on 23/8/2016 at 08:14
I used gimballed pulse right up until I got my FAS. The Vulture with dual gimballed large pulse lasers is awesome; the gimbal range in the Vulture is spectacular, meaning you can stay on target longer at larger angles.
However, with my FAS, I started running fixed weapons. What people fail to mention is that fixed weapons have a slight amount of auto-aim too. As long as a ship's in your reticle, each weapon's crosshair dot should fix on to them.
I play with configurations a lot now, but tend to fall back on fixed beam lasers (2 medium, 1 large) and a large plasma accelerator (by necessity, fixed). I've used an engineer to mod my three beams to have the special effect "Thermal Vent", which decreases heat build-up as long as I'm on target and increases it if I'm firing them off-target. I'm going to change the large one to be Thermal Shock, which will dump heat in to my target.
However, I also absolutely love gimballed multi-cannons and rail guns.
Multis are great for doing hull damage, so using lasers to strip shields, then multis to pound the hull works brilliantly.
And rails, while having a LOT of heat build-up, do insane damage, especially to modules. Some of the most deadly enemies in the game are relatively small ships like the Asp Scout equipped with dual rails.
The problem with multis and rails is limited ammo. I hate having to head back to base every 20 minutes to restock ammo, although this has been lessened now you can manufacture some ammo in the field with scooped materials.
The ones I haven't tried out yet which are apparently flavour-of-the-month are missiles and torpedoes. While they share the limited ammo problem of multis and rails, they make up for it with splash damage against non-shielded hulls that has the potential to damage multiple sub-systems.
Since the 2.1 patch, I've been hit by this a LOT, and it's the main reason I try to never take on more than one ship at a time now, no matter what size they are. There's nothing like focussing on one wing member only to have its smaller companion peck away your shields then ruin your day with a few missile blasts.
Note: One could ask "If you don't like limited ammo weapons, why do you use a plasma accelerator?"
The answer to which is that the PA is a spike damage weapon, very hard to get on target and therefore mostly used on larger targets (Cobra size and up) when their shields are down, so 100 shots last a long time.
Thirith on 24/8/2016 at 06:31
Yeah, I think I'll finally have to give up on just having one kind of weapons and instead use a lasers/kinetic setup, with my scanners in fire group 2. Not entirely decided yet whether I'll go for beam lasers rather than my usual lowest-common-denominator pulse lasers.
I'm quite looking forward to some of the cosmetic changes they've got planned, e.g. the more specific station interiors. While I'm greatly enjoying the game, it is lacking in specific flavour; as much as is feasible in a game of this scope and design, I'd like to see some more Privateer-like elements.
henke on 25/8/2016 at 05:33
Finally went ahead and bought Horizons last night. Then bought an SRV, put it in my Hauler and headed for the nearest planet. Landed in a town called Yang's Progress and drove around a bit. I like the handling on this thing. :)
Malf on 25/8/2016 at 07:54
Yeah, I can happily spend quite a bit of time pootling about planets in the SRV. I really like how the radar works in it for finding things; adds a bit of mystery to the game.
Edit: Oh, and instead of upgrading my lasers, I went and traded in the FAS for a Fer De Lance. Have to be careful with this baby, as I only have enough cash left for one re-buy.
Thirith on 25/8/2016 at 11:25
I've yet to drive around in my SRV. The one time I had a mission that required me to, I didn't actually have the damn SRV, just the landing suite and the Planetary Vehicle Hangar... which I found out as I was about to land. Gotta remedy that before long.
Also, it still happens to me so often that I check out the missions, look at one, plot a course, launch and accelerate to go into supercruise - only to realise that I didn't actually *accept* the mission. D'oh.
henke on 26/8/2016 at 06:34
Last night I accepted a data delivery job that was gonna net me 37 000 credits, tho the destination was pretty far away. Had to stop for fuel once on the way, but I eventually got there, only to have no idea where to deliver the data to. I was looking for a planetary outpost called Thomas Keep in the Indramasci system, but barely any of this system had been mapped out. An hour of fumbling around later I'd still gotten nowhere. Looking online I learned that I can apparently scan planets if I have a planetary scanner, so I headed over to a station in the next system to buy one only to learn that I did already have a Basic Discovery Scanner, only I didn't know how to use it. Figured that out, drove back, scanned the shit out of everything, found a bunch of planets, but no actual outposts on them. Landed on one, drove around a bit and found a crashed... thing, with an angry drone buzzing around it. Blew up the drone and siphoned the data from the thingy, got fined a ticket. Still no closer to finding Thomas Keep.
23 hours in and I still don't know what the hell I'm doing in this game.
And y'know what, that's great. This truly feels like a fully realized world (or universe, rather), with it's own rules and systems. It's not a easily digestable experience served up to you on a platter. The world isn't here for you, the hero, to saunter through on a pre-determined path to victory. Instead it's a simulation built on a complex set of systems which you will need to learn, and integrate yourself into, or you will perish. And that makes it so immersive.
Malf on 26/8/2016 at 07:10
Well, that and sometimes missions are just plain broken, which is why I rarely do them now. I took one the other day that warned me the activity was illegal, but the reward was over a million creds. I just needed to fly to an outpost and destroy 4 of a certain type of skimmer. Unfortunately, after going there multiple times and racking up a hefty bounty taking out the base's defenses every time, I realised that the type of skimmer I was meant to destroy simply doesn't spawn at the type of base the mission was sending me to.
I learned a fair old bit about how best to attack bases and atmospheric combat in a ship while I was there, true. But I came away very pissed off that I'd picked up a bounty for attempting an impossible mission.
